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Feed of posts on WordPress.com tagged "sne-guide"Fri, 09 Dec 2016 15:27:57 +0000https://en.wordpress.com/tags/enhttps://godlikeroy.wordpress.com/2011/08/11/the-ultimate-guide-to-supernova-elite-sne-via-pot-limit-omaha-plo-%e2%80%93-part-4-increasing-your-winrate/
Thu, 11 Aug 2011 10:44:02 +0000GodlikeRoyhttps://godlikeroy.wordpress.com/2011/08/11/the-ultimate-guide-to-supernova-elite-sne-via-pot-limit-omaha-plo-%e2%80%93-part-4-increasing-your-winrate/If you’ve made it this far into the guide then you’re serious about hitting Supernova Elite. Hopefully you’ve read the first three parts: Is it worth it financially?, Social, Mental & Physical Considerations and Having a Plan B. So by now you should have established that it’s worth it for you to attempt to make SNE, you should have a backup plan in case things go awry and you should have an idea of the social, mental and physical challenges ahead. That’s all well and good but at the end of the day we’re here to make money — so how about we look at some ways to improve your bottom line and increase that winrate.

When it comes to mass multi-tabling pot limit omaha there are certain situations that will come up over and over again. Learn to master these situations and you will be a beast at the tables; fail to do so and you’ll be yet another run of the mill reg who4-tabling lags will run over and even the fish will have fun with. You don’t want to be that person, do you? The following notes and thoughts are from my experiences over the years playing 8-20 tables of PLO. The list is by no means exhaustive nor will every point be expanded upon as much as possible (i ain’t writing a book here) — but it’s a good starting point and hopefully a solid reference for anyone attempting this feat.

1. Eliminate the bottom 20% of your range OOP right now. This is almost certain to show a profit for everyone. PLO is a game of position and being out of it means you’re at a disadvantage right off the bat — why would you want to play a weak hand? While you can definitely profitably get away with playing marginal hands out of position, you can’t do it while playing 12+ tables. You really can’t. You’re going to need specific reads, you’re going to need to be donk betting, barreling off, check-raise bluffing rivers, blocker-bluffing, value betting thinly and hoping that your opponent isn’t doing all of these things better than you (in position) to show a profit with your most marginal hands. There’s nothing wrong with folding.

Note that I didn’t list a range of hands and tell you what to play and what not to play. You know your own strengths and weaknesses; you know your ranges and what you’re comfortable with. Whatever you consider to be “marginal”, when you’re out of position, just fold. Whether that’s AT76ss, QQ86r, AKT5ss or 8876ss — that’s up to you to decide. Remember: just because when you’re going over hands, studying your game and analyzing lines to take you believe that it’s +EV to play a certain hand does not mean that the same will be true when you’re playing 12 tables and have 4 other hands to focus on at the time.

2. Don’t play an overwhelming number of tables. If you feel overwhelmed by the number of tables you have running and the decisions you need to make, close some tables. It’s almost always more profitable to play fewer tables and have a higher winrate (or lower lossrate, whatever your goal is) than to eek out 15% more VPPs by having those extra 2 or 3 tables running. One mistake in a big pot because you’re panicked with too many decisions and the monetary gain from VPPs you’ve earned over your last 5 sessions of extra tables is gone. And I can almost guarantee that one mistake, but it will happen far more frequently than every 5 sessions.

There’s no reason to play too many tables. This is something that I have been struggling with most recently. I find myself waking up, looking at the lobby, and jumping on every waitlist from 3/6 to 25/50. It starts off slow and things are going great, the tables are good, and i’m playing well. Then all of a sudden I have 14 tables running and things are getting hectic. A couple of tables are shorthanded now. I need to pay more attention. I think i’ll just close a couple — but which ones? Hmm they all look good. Fish here, weak regular there. Okay i’ll just keep them up and focus really hard. Oh crap another 2 tables just popped up. That’s okay i’ll just close them, no need to play them. **** look at the whale on that table. Ok, one more can’t hurt. Before you know it you’re misclicking, timing out, missing bluffs, not value-betting a river and making poor decisions on 15 tables rather than making good decisions on 10. It’s not worth it.

3. Take notes. Most players don’t take enough notes. Some players don’t take any notes. I’ve found that those who mass multi table usually fall into the “no notes” category. They think the fact that they’re playing so many tables is an excuse not to take notes. They think their HUD is good enough. They think taking notes will distract them and make them pay less attention. They be wrong. Taking notes will make you pay moreattention. The human brain is trained to remember things at a much higher rate when something is repeated and written down. Your notes may be less extensive than if you were playing 2 tables, and you may make less of them, but do not eliminate note-taking from your game altogether. Just don’t.

I would begin by color-coding your opponents. Stars has the nifty feature available to you, so use it. I use the following system:

Once I have someone categorized it is already easier to play vs. them. From there I expand upon my notes — are they a calling station? do they bluff a lot / not at all? how often do they double barrel? do they bluff raise flops? how do they play in 3bet pots? do they blocker bluff? and so on and so forth. It’s an easy habit to start and once more a highly profitable one — if not for anything else than for the fact that it will indeed increase your focus on the tables.

4. Fight for the small pots. It’s so easy to let them go and move on — especially when you’re on a multitude of other tables and have decisions that are up or about to come up. But this is a leak, and one that is magnified significantly over hundreds of thousands of hands. There’s a limped pot and you check in the BB and the flop is 552r? Bet. Stab. It’s +EV, I can almost guarantee that. It’s folded to the SB who completes and we are in the BB. Raise. We have ultimate position and we know that the SB likely has a marginal hand at best. Sometimes they will fold then and there, sometimes they will fold on the flop, and past that we play poker in position. How bad can that be? It also means in the future they will be more likely to simply fold their SB to you, not wanting to get into difficult spots OOP to an aggressive player. Another bonus.

Those were just two examples of ways to fight for the small pots. There are dozens of scenarios similar to those where a small bet here or there will net you a tidy profit. Sometimes it will work and sometimes it won’t, but in the long run it will be profitable. It might add 1bb/100 to your winrate. It might add less, it might add more. But it will add. Let’s say you’re playing a mix of 1/2 and 2/4 to reach SNE. Using approximate VPP rates you will play 416,666 hands of 2/4 and 500,000 hands of 1/2. Adding 1bb/100 to your winrate will profit you a neat $26,666.64 over the year. That’s one big blind per 100 hands. It’s nothing when you think about it. Think about all the pots that go by uncontested; think about how often they happen (more than once in 100 hands, right?). Think about your edge in picking them up. Yeah, it’s huge. Don’t overlook the small pots. They add up.

So there you have four significant areas of mass multi-tabling PLO to focus on that will surely benefit your bottom line. Heeding the advice in this post will help anyone — not just those chasing supernova elite, but I do believe these issues tend to be overlooked more often by the SNE chasers of the world. If you’re already doing everything I mentioned well then more power to you. If you’re not, then start. Now.